{"id":9376,"date":"2014-11-12T22:14:46","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T03:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/?p=9376"},"modified":"2014-11-12T22:14:46","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T03:14:46","slug":"barry-zito-hoping-to-make-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/2014\/11\/12\/barry-zito-hoping-to-make-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Barry Zito hoping to make return"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"barryzito\"
\nBarry Zito sat out the entire 2014 season as he took a year off from baseball. A former Cy Young Award winner, a now 36-year-old Zito is looking to make a comeback.<\/p>\n

Scott Boras, the agent for Zito, told reporters at baseball’s winter meetings that Zito was hoping to return as a starter for the 2015 season. <\/p>\n

“He called me on the phone in August and said, ‘I’m ready to go. I want to pitch,”’ Boras said, via ESPN<\/a>. “He set up the plan and did all of that.”<\/p>\n

A first round pick of the Athletics in 1999 the left handed Zito compiled a 165-143 record with a 4.02 ERA over 14 seasons with the Athletics and San Francisco Giants. <\/p>\n

After leaving the Athletics he signed a massive seven-year deal with the Giants in the winter of 2006 but never really lived up to the contract in the regular season. Zito however was a key member of the Giants during the post season helping the team win two World Series.<\/p>\n

“You hear honest and valued owners say, ‘You know, Barry Zito’s contract was wonderful, because we won two world championships. We hired a hen to sit on our eggs of (Matt) Cain, (Tim) Lincecum and (Jonathan) Sanchez, and look where our system is because we had a guy who could take on the No. 1 role for a couple of years and put us in that position” Boras said.<\/p>\n

Regardless of what your opinion of Zito is, he will almost surely have to settle for a minor league contract should he be serious about a return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barry Zito sat out the entire 2014 season as he took a year off from baseball. A former Cy Young Award winner, a now 36-year-old Zito is looking to make a comeback. Scott Boras, the agent for Zito, told reporters at baseball’s winter meetings that Zito was hoping to return as a starter for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[269,501,139],"coauthors":[6],"class_list":["post-9376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-barry-zito","tag-mlb","tag-san-francisco-giants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9377,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9376\/revisions\/9377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9376"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}